Cast Aside Perception
by Winkaku
Summary: He had gone out for a flight, to answer the call of the sky. He is brought in an angry mech too mad to hide his rather severe case of the crazies this time.
1. wind in the willows

A/n: this story was inspired by *cough-ripped-off-cough* another story called "and he was gone" written by Nagisha. Through every story I read about Starscream, there is a recurrent theme of others thinking him to be insane; few of the stories seemed to capture that idea in context. I longed to write a story similar to this one, a story that expressed the attitude toward this certain bot and the ones around him; of what it was that gave him such a reputation and how it affected his being second in command. This fic is also highly influenced by a writer known as Ceris Malfoy.

My view of Starscream has always been jumbled when it comes to his personality make model and color scheme. I draw less inspiration and fact from the anime and cartoons and more so from the writers of this community and my own imagination. My inner eye sees him as mostly white and red with traces of gold and sky blue with either blue hands or black hands and a deep onyx face lit up by hellfire crimson eyes and a sneaky snarl. Most of this view is admittedly effected by Gundams and the proud strength and stature they carry, which is odd considering I never really watched the series; though I did make a model of Wing Gundam Zero once. I see him as sleek, relatively smaller in that he is less bulky than others but tall and all consuming, built for war and dangerously intelligent.

As far as the run-on sentences go, I've always kind of seen them as part of my style and they lend a rambling theme to the text. It makes a good read, just don't try reading it aloud or you'll probably suffocate; and remember peeps, I'm shooting for crazy here.

So with nods to both these writers and a wink to Wing Gundam, I give you my latest work.

Edit: I have found myself to be not only influenced by writer Ceris Malfoy but now also by the works of Abyssal1, his/her theories on Cybertronian physiology are amazing! I definitely recommend reading this authors works and accredit many of my modifications to them as I will incorporating them into my work.

–

Tittle: Chasing Vertigo

Summary: This wasn't supposed to happen, it wasn't supposed to be this way. Interrogate the prisoner and get him the hell out... but all that's left is the laughing in the dark. The red eyed bloody pin-pricks set in the blackness of hell that watch the world burn, a fire eating at the edges of the worlds horizon knowing only the greatest of glee for it.

Someone once told me: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

–

How he had managed to get into this... _situation_ in the first place was a blaspheme of irony in and of itself and as irritating as a strangled pitch and cry that just wouldn't die; both of which, he was quite used to by now.

The sky had called to him and, being a seeker born to fly as he was, he had answered and so had the air.

The wind screaming past his body as he flew up through the sky, angry screeching hands grasping and pushing and pulling, lifting him at his wings with a hard rush along a hot belly of smooth plates, surrounded in frigid vapor and ice, clawing up the horizon. The molten gold of the primitive systems atmosphere had seemed to set his body on fire, the g-forces generated from the upward climb and dive after dive along the way a thrilling shock through the systems and boiling the blood alive. His energon all the way up into his audio receptors, it was as if his head would burst; the glowing purpled blood bleeding through his burning bright optics like jagged wind-blown tears.

It was _glorious_.

At the crest of his arc he shot to the earth like a meteorite, never faltering, straight down like an arrow shot from Sagittarius himself.

The world focused down to a single point as dozens of complex warning systems and loud klaxons blared, shrieking of death on impact.

He flew straight down toward the earthen crags of grass and rock and there was a great rumble as at the last second he pulled his form up sharp, armored belly just barely scraping the jagged wind blasted clearing, tearing down trees as with a great crack the sound barrier shrieked apart and shook the earth. He cut a swath of fractured trees through the meager forest, pulling out of his great skyward thrust to be carried by his own momentum transforming mid flight to experience the briefest of kliks of zero gravity staring at the energon that pooled from his nose and optics as it drifted away in small globules, fascinated by the luminescent liquid. Within seconds the flow of the bled fluid went from straight away from him to a gradual upward arc into the sky, his processor a flare of euphoria and a slight nausea brought on by the shifting of gravity, acceleration and altitude. Tucking in his arms and wings, he twirled through the sky in an almost suicidal downward camber, spreading his wings just above the ground to touch down with a light caress over the dusty forest floor of mosses and dirt at the broad sides of a rocky mountain. He stood on strong legs and nimble peds, a pillar of moonlight white unflinching.

He briefly entertained the idea of studying the organic emerald beneath his feet...if he could just see it beneath a microscope, dissect it's organic building blocks piece by piece, categorizing each bit... tearing it apart... He smiled to himself, longing and quiet save for the heady thrum of his internals.

That was when they had spotted him... the Lambo twins... why of all the places on this pitiful rock of mud and organic slag that they could have been... those two cretins had to be here... it was...incredibly..._annoying_.

He brought his lithe white wings to flare at his sides and with a delicate swivel carried them into an alert stance, dark face blank, eyes like fiery pin-pricks in the crimson dusk, bright embers burning in a bed of coal. A seekers wings had always and would always be the most sensitive area on their body, an expansive and delicate network of acute sensors alert to everything from velocity to barometric pressure, electromagnetic fields and even the slightest hint of a current to carry them.

He stood stock still, quiet and regal, listening to the wind with his wings held in a proud stance, feeling for any shift in the atmosphere, any change in the air or the energy around him would betray those who were fool enough to attack _him_.

There it was.

They had come at him with there usual style, much to the seekers amusement, and their assigned guardian had been none the happier for their actions. Starscream knew those twins like he knew the back of his own clawed hands, every servo and every finely filigreed edge and pattern he'd so _delicately_ etched upon them; they didn't stand a chance, not now, _not_ this time.

The twins had dubbed it "jet judo"... how it irritated him; clumsy hands of metal on _his_ wings, touching _him_, pulling _him_; the only hands that would touch_ his_ wings **ever**, would be the icy cold claws of the screaming frozen air, of death itself and of the skies caught on fire! **Chaos! **

Starscream took their pawing and kicking as an insult to his place as vosian warlord of the sky and with an angry shriek he bucked them off, nearly clawing the others face in twain. He kicked with long powerful white legs, sending the youngest of the twins flying like a projectile straight through the trees, one crashing cracking organic pile of twigs and slag after another.

The two bots seemed to be reconsidering their position as... Bluestreak was it?..._hurrrrrr_, he couldn't help the feral snaking smirk and laugh that seemed to purr like sweet saccharine venom from his vocalizer; the cyanide in the appleseed. The other twitched under his gaze, the trilling sliding into his audials and processor, an unearthly high-pitched rumble and buzz not like anything they'd heard the air commander utter before.

Starscream held only one true like for this pitiful planet upon which he had been sequestered, only one thing about this organic order had settled into his mind and belly with it's startling ease.

He absolutely_ adored _how _everything_ on this planet _burned _and_ snapped_ and _twisted_ and _broke_ into tiny irreparable _disgusting_ little pieces.

Though this world did not groan or scream with the grind of metal on metal nor writhe in the agony of brutality and war. Though it deprived him of the more violent and entertaining insurrections of whole cities and countries torn from their ivory towers down into the furnace by the countless reaching damned. Though it brought genocide with only a human face and only a handful to play with... he would simply have to amuse himself with what was left, quite thoroughly. Study them know them feel them read them _own them_.. the trick was in making them last long enough to be fun.

He reared like a predator, a cobra before a trapped rat, crooning into the wind as it responded in kind with its own soft caress a sweet breadth of organic contaminants and a cool honeyed silken touch along his cheek and neck, fever bright optics half hidden behind exquisitely delicate shutters; tapered to a fine curve to fit an admittedly handsome face. His immaculate onyx faceplates almost flushed full with energon at the wisps of contact, the bright blood singing inside him, the sky and the air were his lovers, his sleek body alive and burning hot, sparks of ecstasy dancing off his form of loosened unclamped groaning armor and boiling black mass, a waltz over the bright silver starred folds of subspace beneath with an electric heat haze in the cold.

They stared at him as he all but free-sparked on the wind, slightly abhorrent and somewhat entranced, hypnotized by roiling cosmic black beneath thick elegant white and crimson armor; _bewildered _by the seeker's odd behavior; _this_ never happened before.

This was obscene! Ones inner mass was not to be flaunted, it was a carnal nakedness not meant to be shared beyond lovers and closed doors but damned if they couldn't look away from it; a courtesan with her skirt hiked up so prettily, keening and kneeling across the berth and who in their right mind could deny that?

In the barest second in time he struck forward like a gunshot, leaving the earth of shuddering dust and rocks with a high spinning kick of sleek white legs and taking the elder of the twins by surprise, right across his face. The screech of metal and the snapping of cables had sung to him like a chorus; such a beautiful sound, how he wanted so much to hear it again and again and again.

With a heady sigh he relinquished his hold on bliss and decided it would be a good idea to bring his head out of the clouds for a bit; it was nice yes, but euphoria was ill suited for fighting. He led the spin kick into a graceful twirl and came to a standstill a few yards away, balanced perfectly on the very tips of his narrow armored pedes.

Still on the climb down from an unnatural ecstasy that came with all but completely loosing his processor and leasing his very mass to the winds, he opened bewitching almost painfully too-bright ruby red optics with a full-bodied breath and sigh, a husky toothed murmur across his vents.

This was new, this was a creature that they had not witnessed before, a strange and erie beast of lithe white curves and matt black steel taloned servos, hellfire eyes bleeding burnt energon down and along fine nasal plating like boiling bright tear drops.

They hesitated, they were right to do so; _how dare they touch him!_

How dare they come to him!

These pissants were not fit to look at him!

Raw guttural anger curled at the back of his mind with a white static hiss and haze, mad rage in the twitching of polar-night claws aching for the sputter and crackle of a dying spark. A burning bile set his insides on fire dancing in tandem with a throbbing spark and a beastly murmuring the likes that no mech should utter.

First came an intense pain, then came the very edges of oblivion in a dancing curtain of soft silken fury and a reddy black haze with a horrendous echoing shriek.

That damned Bluestreak had shot him and not just shot him but he had put a round straight through the seekers left thruster just as he had burst forward into the sky..._irritating._

Normally Starscream could fly with an offline thruster or even broken wings, he had done so far too many times before, he'd flown like the devil but with the one angry twin practically clawing up his aft... he had lost his balance... yes... _**irritating**_.

Rammed straight into a mountainside! Clawing and shrieking all the way down! They would pay, they would _suffer_, they would learn by his own hands all that he had to teach and so much _more_.

**-YOUREDEADBOY-**

He kicked and bucked and _shook_, body on fire, sunset orange cockpit cracked down the middle, snaking in spiderwebs like sharp angry fingers. Taking a good portion of the mountainside with him in tumbling rock he elegantly twirled the fall with his anti-gravs to land feet first on top of Sideswipe almost gently, disturbingly light; the kiss of a promise in his nimble peds. The youths red armor was scratched and dented, he was hacking dust through rocks and staring wide eyed right into the decepticon's fever bright optics. The sleek seeker growled low, a sub-audible purr like a rich thick heaving high-grade that lingered in the back of his processor a beautiful coiled serpent, basking in the sunlight of torment to come. He crouched elegantly and brought the most beautiful claws Sideswipe had ever seen to bear along his wiry throat, so close the pulse of energon rose the veins and arteries below to meet the others barely touching fingertips in feathery bursts like the trapped bird of a spark in his chest. His breath peppered the seekers immaculate faceplates, small bursts of hot and wet, a fog in the cold frost of snow-capped mountain crags; a crown of ice. Reaching forward with a curled back fist the lambo struck out clumsily, trying to knock the seeker off him, it was like trying to hit a ghost, a pearlescent form twisting like rivers of moonlight that seemed as if to disperse like white water; like trying to catch chill furious air with his bare servos. Each strike was met with either a clawed blocking swipe or a furious rebuke, the seeker never backing off, never backing down; he seemed almost incapable of it.

His brother was nowhere to be seen past a crumbling mountainside and a broken forest of trees snapped like toothpicks. Fear roiled in his spark for a sibling who's presence he could no longer sense for the first time in his life. It was only him and the devil hounding his spark chamber with the ugliest snarl he'd ever seen.

Again pain flared across a blackened wing, agony manifest by the energon sparks shooting into the air and the spray of black massblood. There was an ugly scream followed by a blur of speed; a back-hand across Sideswipes faceplates that sent him into the rocks heralded by a visceral cracking crunch that couldn't possibly mean anything good and ending in a seeping silence.

All of Bluestreaks training told him that a seekers wings were their weak point, that the blow he'd dealt should have sent the mech sprawling and that a seeker model should not be able to fight so well on the ground. This wasn't real, it couldn't be, Starscream was the joke of the entire autobot army- a rumored fear tossed aside by laughter- the coward sycophant hiding under his lords shadow; _this wasn't __**happening**_.

The hit barely seemed as if to faze him and as the clawed creature, standing tall and proud, stock-still in the dust and mist, lowered his gaze to tack onto him in one single succinct and predatory motion; he doubted himself... was this actually a mech? Mechs were living breathing people of emotions, of happiness and sadness and morals. This thing was twisted, some kind of sick barely-there parody of a spark wrapped up in a lithe body of red white, blue and black; a rancid disgusting bruise on the face of everything and anything that was right.

And damned if it wasn't the most fantastic thing he'd ever seen.

_-I see you-_

And it was coming toward him.

He could stop it, he should stop it, he should _fire_ but for some reason he couldn't even feel the gun in his hands. Time seemed to slow down as the seeker quietly waltzed up to him with a sultry casual walk and yet it felt like only seconds had gone by; could this thing distort time? Starscream was so close now that he could see his frightned fragmented reflection in the seekers cracked cockpit, his many fractured faces staring back at him with a look so foreign that he would almost swear the mech in those mirrors wasn't him. Bluestreak remained motionless, breath fogging along the russet red glass as he slowly lifted his gaze to meet the others eyes and immediately wish he hadn't. The disgust, the _revulsion_ in those incredible optics burned with such an intensity they cut him to the core, it was as sick as the complete lack of anything else present on the seekers face.

Bluestreak wasn't sure as to what had happened next, one moment there was quiet and the next there was screaming followed by a deep and primal_ need _that had sent his energy field wild and his body into overdrive. It was a sick and powerful heat behind his eyes, dribbling down from a frenetic pulsing spark and pooling at his forearms and legs like magma. It was the desire to flee, to_ run_ from the Unicron lapping at his spark and nipping at his heels that turned the shy defender into a frenzied terrified _needing_ animal leveling his gun against all of his honor and ideology for the first point-blank kill of his life.

And Starscream knew it.

With a loud screech of too-sharp claws on metal, Starscream dragged his embellished sapphire-black talons along the steel plating of one of the walls of his cell leaving deep gouges in the alloy. He dug them into the grubby metal and relished the horrid sound that sent shrill tremors through him and cut his audio receptors raw, made his very mass shiver. Forearms just brushing the walls and a displeased fang-toothed grimace eating up his immaculate face, he slowly slid down with a static hiss.

There had been pain blood-spatter and darkness but Starscream had been right, the gunner was _far _too weak.

Those blithering blaster-happy fools had however managed to break his left wing, cracked it clean down the middle and shot a hole straight through his side! He sighed a deep trill as his chest convulsed and forced a thick angry cough and a spurt of massblood from his abdomen. Something must have come loose from the crash, whatever it was it hurt like the pit and if the putrid viscous half-fried goo congealing on the cusp of his right chest vent was any hint; it was probably bad...so very _irritating_...ah well.

They would pay dearly for this.

"Stop that!"

Ironhide practically howled at him as Ratchet and Optimus did their best to block out the shrieking horror with their hands. They'd been at this for almost a whole day now, the decepticon was just toying with them!

"I don't understand it! I've pumped him so full of sedatives he should be in stasis-lock!" The soldier in Ratchet just wanted to reach out and strangle the impertinent bot for the blatant assault on his senses but the medic in him just wanted Starscream unconscious so he could tend to his broken wing!

The appendage was truly a fragged up mess, bright crackling wires jutting out in all directions and sparking angrily, leaking energon and spurtin dork mass. What concerned Ratchet the most however was the gurgling rasping and rails coming from the seekers chest, the vent at his shoulder spewing sour energon and tainted coolant with each exhale.

Starscream just turned in one fine fluid motion to meet his gaze and growled low in what must have been a painful rumble.

"Irritating..."

"Just...sit down, we know you don't want to be here anymore than we want you to be... calm down, answer our questions and let us see to your wounds."

A tinny sigh. "You'll get nothing from me." He took a deep bubbling breath from within his chest, his internal systems sputtering in a long rasping drawl that made Ratchet wince. "Stop wasting my time..." He purred in a soft moaning droll; clearly displeased and definitely unimpressed.

"He's not going to tell us anything any time soon Optimus." Ironhide turned to look to his leader with a stoney gaze. "Not with diplomacy anyway..."

The thought of torture gave pause to Starscream as he watched the play of emotions over the autobot's masked face; worry, anger..._pity_...

Had he the opportunity to break his bonds he would show the Prime_ just_ how much pity _he_ had.

_-come close little one and I will show you _my_ mercy-_ how his claws ached.

An absolutely wicked smile snaked along the seekers face as he watched the frustration roil in them, the very idea that they would resort to methods of torture made his insides wriggle with a mirth that was positively evil; those idealistic fools, the great and merciful autobots, "reduced" to torture. He watched the lessors turn to their leader, Optimus placing a hand on his angry weapons specialist's rigid shoulders; the seekers smile grew and seemed as if to split his almost delicate facial features in half, eating up his face like a virus.

"...Get a room."

The expression had been flippant but the resulting look on their faces was absolutely priceless and Starscream made sure to file this memory away with utmost care... maybe, just maybe he'd show it to Megatron and the others if he was in a _particularly_ good mood.

It started as a short disquieting purr that quickly turned into a long staccato fit of laughing cackling and rails that made Ratchet wince again. The medic reached into the subspace compartment at his belt and pulled out another syringe of sedative, locking it into place on his wrist. So far he had managed to stick the seeker three times, one attempt nearly costing him his right arm and adding a few more dents and a dozen gouges to his body. Ratchet debated trying again, the decepticons resilience, amazing as it was, was nearing it's end; thin slivers of tainted energon leaked between sharp denta, staining the black derma plating a bright twilight purple. The seekers form trembled as he shook and his air vents hissed and gurgled but the bot defiantly remained far too dangerous to approach.

"YOU-" Ironhide lurched forward wide-eyed and angry as Optimus pulled him back by his bulky shoulder.

"Calm down-"

"Optimus this, this thing-"

"Is doing this on purpose..." Optimus let go of the other to meet his gaze again, Ironhide trying as best he could to school his expression.

Starscream on the other hand, slouched down to lay on the metal flooring of his cell with a look of pure boredom, lazily fingering a scar into soiled ground and deciding that they had ignored him enough.

This was his interrogation was it not?

"_Companionship! _Primus deliver me from such horror!"

His shoulders roiled, thick cables and silvered abdominal plating undulating beneath warrior armor as his every word seethed a playful hitch and spat thin threads of energon blood in slivers to pool on the floor, giggling in contempt, it smelled burnt

"I'll show you_ companionship_ you slagging-"

"Ironhide!"

"But-"

"Don't let him bait you."

"Starscream." The seeker daintily turned his head to the prime, a feral smile along aristocratic lips as his back arced and long talons barely hissed across the steel plate flooring; he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this. Indeed, every twitch and every angry rasp was like music, he lay like a cat toying with a mouse, his body rising into a crouch; the seeker seemed to drown the cell in his presence despite his size and Optimus almost found himself quite grateful for the energy-field that separated them.

It made him wonder just who the prisoner really was here.

_-I'm here because I let you have me-_

"What is your-"

The decepticon didn't even let him finish before he had struck upward like a serpent, armored metal body just barely touching the field of energy and dappling the translucent purple bulwark with bright red rings on contact. He sent them all taking a startled back step as the high-pitched mirth died out, like a candles flame snuffed in the wind and a cry cut unerringly short in pitch moonless night; one could almost hear the clack of jaws and teeth in the dark.

"Save it."

It threw Optimus for a loop as in the blink of an eye the seeker had gone from playfully sadistic to completely and deadly serious. The mood swings this bot seemed to revel in were quite disconcerting and he inwardly wondered just how the other decepticons had learned to handle their SIC's abhorrently unstable personality... it was _unnerving_. It doubled his fears for Bluestreak, the bot had come back looking like he'd shook hands with Unicron himself; he was currently being looked after in the medi-bay. The damage had been mostly psychological from the look of it, save for Sideswipe and Sunstreaker there was very little physical damage to speak of. The two had been found trying their very best to staunch their own bleeding, to gather themselves and to comfort a youngling that had just shot to kill for the first time ever and even Ratchets sedatives couldn't stop the little blue mech from shaking. It had been nearly two earth days and the young bot still cried like a sparkling; refusing to be alone and unable to recharge properly. Just the thought of what could have possibly turned those two arrogant twins into quiet ghosts and a young mech that never seemed to stop talking into a silent shivering wreck made Optimus's blood run cold. The look on the decepticons face had been... disturbing, like he knew something they didn't; even as Ratchet had him off-lined for removal to the brig. A darker part of the prime cried out for vengeance but he had not gotten this far into the battlefield to succumb to hate now.

_-watch me break them watch me break you-_

"Go along and play now then; don't blame me, remember now, _I'm_ just a product of circumstance." Back to impish manipulations again it seemed; morality or no, this mech was trying indeed.

"Shut up! Just shut up!" He was pushing Ironhide's patience to the limit too, the other seemed determined to see it snap... just one more twist...

_-I've torn the sparks from children for less than you- _He could almost taste it.

"I Thought you'd brought me here to talk?" He pulled away from the field with a hiss of sucking air, taking on that same bored look, as if those in front of him were not captors but mere entertainment and doing a very poor job at it.

"Though I doubt you would be paid to talk."

The look on Starscream's face was a positively lurid and vulgar slander as he turned his rather opulent half-shuttered gaze to Ironhide, that elegant smile of his turning into a jagged line of sensual obscenities.

The implications boiled the blood in their veins.

"You fragging pile of _**SLAG**_!"

Finally, after hours of teasing the old fool into a rise, Starscream had gotten what he wanted; reaction, and in this case a full-blown _tantrum_.

Ironhide reached through the field and with the force of his large form he pinned the injured seeker to the wall of the cell, digging his hands into the others torn open side. The decepticon laughed and laughed as the other roared angrily, pushing him into the wall hard enough to dent it.

Laughing laughing; what in the pit was so funny! Ironhide mentally damned the decepticon to the deepest ring of fire, determined to turn those laughs into cries of agony-

"Ironhide!"

With a lurch Ironhide gathered his senses to himself, looking from the pinned seeker to Optimus's hand on his shoulder and back down to the blood on his own hand. He relented; the decepticon still laughing a chorus of shrill energon chocked chortles. Ironhide released the decepticon, watching as the insane creature shook with a raucous crowing laughter that forced energon to spew from the reopened wound at his wing and spurt out of his chest vent with each lurch, leaning into the dent that his body had carved into the wall. Ironhide looked anxiously from Optimus to a wide-eyed Ratchet who stood shaking his head back and forth, perturbed as the bot went from luxurious peals of wet cackling to a hiccuping hum.

The sudden transformation in Starscream took them by surprise, shakes of mirth quickly melting into quivering agony as he drew up his legs to his chest and slid to the floor, clutching his fine armored head in his claws and howled a scream of pure unadulterated hate and terror. It tore his fine visage into the most ugly blaspheme of contempt and toothy hellcat hate heaving and burning straight out of the pit and forged by the devil himself.

He shrieked loud and long, _screamed _a freakish hideous death knell that Optimus was sure would stay in his memory banks forever and just as quickly as it came it abruptly cut off into a shrill sobbing, dead in his throat. The bot's shoulders hitched and his whole form lurched as he seemed to be desperately clawing his way back into the wall; burning wide eyed vermilion red optics lost from the physical world. The dark cell itself seemed transfigured, all cracks and dents and a single long splattering massblood and burnt energon smear trailing down to meet the back of it's occupant.

_-laughing laughing laughing-_

Ironhide had nearly jumped out of his armor as he backpedaled to get out of the cell, watching the metamorphosis like a horror show.

In a matter of seconds the shaking stopped as Starscream fell deathly silent and still, the only sign of life coming from the rails of a chest filled with bled energon and a deep rattling that made Ratchet squirm.

"I...I-I didn't-"

"It's ok... just...just stay back, let me handle this."

Ratchet stepped forward past the other, through the safety of the energy barrier, syringe in hand; he was no mental health expert but he knew problems when he saw them. Any more of these episodes would only cause more pain and more damage. Cautiously he leaned down over the commanders eerily quiet form, needle at the ready as he lifted the others head by the side of his fine jaw. He inspected the seemingly unconscious and, for the moment at least; strangely rather innocuous looking seeker, frowning at what damage that he could see; torn derma and there was definitely internal bleeding...

He brought his hand to cup the side of Starscream's face, fingers delicately tracing along eloquent plating, stopping to glance across small deep gashes and following the scorched line of a strong yet slender neck and marveled at the intricate designs and upgrades the SIC had undoubtedly implemented upon himself. Tiny crafted etchings carved along armor and claws, along slender optics and their shutters; the language was foreign to him, if it was any kind of writing at all, much of it seemed mathematical. He could see sheet-thin surgical marks at the back of the head and neck, the arms and back and legs all followed by filigree even down to and throughout his silver black protoform and wing struts; it was almost artistic despite the morbidity of it. He could actually see through the cracked sunset glass of the seekers cockpit and passed the star spangled mass and internals into an almost scandalous view of the mech's odd spark, a glimpse through the motel door key-hole. The inside of Starscreams chasis spoke of as much abuse and as many repairs as the outside had; swollen stitching, bad welding and a myriad of scars that reeked of wrongness and suffering, he definitely did _not_ want to know how they got there. To Ratchets dislike it appeared as if the esoteric markings continued along the walls of the spark chamber itself as well; that must have been painful. What he could catch of the light from the seekers spark was a pale almost sickly golden hue; like the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, the casing itself seemingly a deformed sphere comprised of jagged milky white opaque crystals; like quartz feathers, enclosing wings greedily clutching their source of life as if to squelch it jealously. The spark itself was a glorious fluttering thing of brilliant light and wings of motion, not something he felt he could begin to describe.

Ironhide stood on tenterhooks as Ratchet lowered his head to scan deep and listen to the wounded bot's chest; there was definitely something leaking in there, he could almost feel the gurgle of loosed and sour energon.

He watched as the other took in another shallow cycle of air, spitting bright purple and blue liquid from the vent. He followed the energon lines with his eyes, tracking the rails to the upper-most center of the chest and cockpit, gaze lifting up along the thick cables and exposed wiring that fed into it and finally back up to his face again. He had been right, there may very well be damage to the spark casing itself, assuming that the deformed husk of a casing was normal for the seeker. The wiring jutting from his almost eviscerated side was a moderate wound and the underlying damage to the cables and support structure beneath was superficial. Ratchets scanners probed deeper, examining everything about the seekers physiology in great detail; there was a crack in the stabilizer cuffs at the peak of the chamber and a secondary energon line had been burned, almost melted into the nest of veins and arteries of tubes and wires it snaked through.

One second he was half-staring at full lips slack over a lax, almost peaceful visage and calculating data, the next he was face to face with wide open bright red optics embellished by an impossibly rich smile; pointed teeth and all.

For a moment, Ratchet could swear the inner ring of the bot's optics blazed an even brighter ruby red; hypnotic like a ring of fine silken fire laced with gold. It was a horizon and it's setting sun with a black ugly nothing just barely peeping over the edge, staring right back, a starving void.

Starscream leaned into the others palm, trilling so softly one would almost think it a halucination, bringing up a delicate looking hand to guide thin rigid fingertips along the surface of his face. Fluidly leading a rough chartreuse hand over embellished regal features to royal black lips, biting the tip of Ratchets index finger and just barely touching it with his cutting silver tongue. The world seemed to come flying back into focus and Ratchet instantly recoiled but not fast enough as the others contented smile mutated into the ugliest most disgusting scowling grimace he had ever seen and that awful hungry nothing reached out. Starscream raked his digits, grasping and clawed, down along the medics arm and hand as the other pulled back like a trapped animal, stripping it of it's armor and carving long lines of pain the whole way down.

It stung like the pit but Ratchet wasn't about to let him get it in freely and with reflexes born of a trained medic he deftly shot up his other hand to quickly, vindictively, bury the needle into the main energon cable hidden within Starscream's neck.

"Ratchet!" Optimus grabbed him buy his shoulders and hauled the medic out before the seeker pulled one or both of his arms out, shoving the decepticon back. Ratchet dabbed at the deep wounds on his hand and forearm as the seeker crouched quietly, claws kneading the air; the armor had been forcefully peeled off and the cuts themselves would need fine welding to close but it was nothing serious.

"What's _with _this freak?"

Ironhide shifted angrily, staring at the decepticon warily as that same shrill chortle spilled out of the others energon slick throat, it was maddening.

As if to taunt them, Starscream got to his feet _again_ and started to once more pace the boundaries of his confines; one step after the other, practically wearing a rut into the metal and boring into them with that same implacable gaze, never taking it off of them for even a second, stalking them.

Like a demon unmasked, the facade of normality curling up like shriveled leaves over an open flame; violated through and through. This thing was beautiful, it was elegant and graceful and _brilliant _and deadly and positively utterly and completely _**sick**__. _It was _**wrong**_.

Every mech in the army had heard tale of _this_ decepticon SIC, the vosian sky-master warrior that was as brilliant as he was unstable; a murderer, a dervish ghost. A mech of unknown age and origin having at least 42 known masteries of science and suspected to have another 13 at least, thought to be the fastest recorded flier in the history of all of Vos with a mad processor to match the speed. Accused of around 480 murders, 430 attempted deactivations and no less than 15 acts of treason within the Iacon system alone yet never convicted. Certified insane by at least 53 reputable asylums and institutions all of which refusing the very idea of sharing the same planetoid as the seeker. Field-medic, combat specialist, mortician, chemist, physicist, mathematician, weapons specialist, tactician, engineer, inventor, xenobiologist, explosives expert, close-quarters combat specialist, long-range combat expert, arial ops expert and a previous deep-space explorer all wrapped up frighteningly loosely with a temper that was the stuff of religious writ and all that was _before_ the war.

It had been their intense _fear_ of him that had lead the many eclectic governments of their kind across the stars to do whatever they could to keep _that_ seeker happy. Wealth and a position of power unchallenged, riches, anything and everything to keep that thing from their shadows, even if in the end it was all really just as simple as **staying out of his way**.

He was a legend, a _myth_, the aristocrat devil that haunted nightmares even long before he was sparked into their world; Starscream had just given it form. Up until now Optimus had wondered just why the mech had been so reviled, what he had done to earn such a reputation; he did not need to speculate any longer.

_This was the decepticon SIC, this was Starscream... how the _hell_ had he missed that._

_He had to get this thing _out _of his hold._


	2. one by one

A/N: I like to portray Starscream as kind of a less stable Hannibal Lector more than happy to go "silence of the lambs" your ass. I kept trying to flesh out the writing more and more but the style made it difficult. In keeping with the current motif though, I had to research characters, basically, I raided wikipedia and ff. Net.

This was admittedly the most difficult chapter I have _ever_ written. It required me to not only be in Starscreams head but in the head of every character in the chapter... I am particularly fried, this was one hell of a labor of love. In the end, it took a lot rum to keep at it and get it to a semblance of right; the most difficult aspect of the story being living up to expectations.

Over time, my image of Starscream solidified somewhat, my imagination picking it up and running off with it, snickering all the way over the hills.

I see the seekers feet as though booted, the armor shifting aside to reveal articulate taloned bird-like feet; three toed and nimble with great curved claws and a fourth toe at the side much like the infamous killing claw of a velociraptor; admittedly, this is a gross artistic liberty.

I also have come to shift seeker armor to be more bird-like; the plating more articulate and segmented to act like feathers. I see a retractable, hawkish battle helm that covers a very beautiful, human-like head, thick metal plating at the back filigreed with gold and tapered like long fine hair; aristocratic and elegant above all else. I've enjoyed creating some rather artistic variants of him.

Edit: I have found myself to be not only influenced by writer Ceris Malfoy but now also by the works of Abyssal1, his/her theories on Cybertronian physiology are amazing! I definitely recommend reading this authors works and accredit many of my modifications to them as I will incorporating them into my work.

Title: Numb3rs _(cause everyone puts a 3 in it.)_

Summary: Come closer.

Had he set aside the time to think about it, he was certain that he would have been quite flattered.

It had all started after his meeting with Optimus; a fun little run-around as it was they seemed to be taking him seriously now.

That or he really was as difficult a patient as Hook accused him of being... how droll.

Their meeting had ended in blackness and he had awoken in pain and in chains behind a roiling field of energy that bartered no exit. That medic of theirs had undoubtedly rummaged through his internals; what remained of his wounds had been sealed, his chest no longer rattled disparagingly and what blood was left had long since dried and congealed. He grimaced, a small quirk of charcoal black lips, noting the dull burning ache of the repairs with a small drawling sigh. With a flicker of cherry red his optics came online and tapered onyx shutters lifted as he surveyed his surroundings, curved ebony shutters peeling back along crimson amygdaloid crystal eyes.

They had bound him to a standing repair plinth and locked him away in a guarded cell for safe keeping it seemed... their loss.

It was dark and strangely quiet, the only sound in the room coming from the 2 mechs seated around a low table. Dust flitted across his eyes as they dimmed a deep burgundy, pinpricks in the black with a cadence of orange and flecks of gold, watching ever silently as the 2 passed their cards along the scratched surface of their impromptu table. Hands fettered at the front Starscream's gaze swept the room, hungry, a hawk among the rats.

1 steel repair plinth, 3 rows of chains and 2 guards... how droll

One turned his head to look at him, blue eyes narrowing as the other elbowed him in the chest; this prisoner was not to be spoken to.

This one was dangerous, Optimus said so.

"Which one's the traitor hmmm?" The seekers grin warped from a slight upturn of gunmetal lips into a toothy smile and a haze of hot breath. He lazily bounced a gleeful gaze back and forth between the two mechs at the table like a snake leisurely deciding which little egg in the nest to devour first, after all, mommy isn't here right now.

"Was it- _Cliffjumper..._ your name is Cliffjumper... such an aptly named little boy." He spoke with a sensual roll and an almost familial fondness, the others designation roiling off his tongue like heaving hot oil, like the devil waiting for his favorite signature.

"Ever the dreamer, the little wannabe hero that wants and wants all the way into the armies all too sticky back seats and onto the ground... and off of a cliff." The seekers optics lit up scandelously as the mech turned to lock wide eyes with him, smile growing to consume the high sharp bloodstained ridges of his cheeks.

"Be quiet." Mirage, that was the one who spoke, a faint tenor of anger expertly hidden behind a veil of indifference but not well enough to hide the disdain.

"Ah... he deigns to speak; the emirate boy, hiding in shadows, hiding in too tall towers wide eyed and staring at the ground so far below, so afraid, so _pathetic_."

"Quiet." Shocked that the seeker could speak Autobot high-court but unwilling to show it, Mirage lay his cards face down on the table and swiveled to look away from him and back to his partner. Disdain turned to the arrogance of a bruised ego and Starscream drank it in, the sound of his claws tapping, ticking against the berth like the hands of a clock.

Ticking and tapping, a brisk click clack melting into the long crawling hiss of metal grinding on metal; a sensual chorus often heard only in the bedroom at late hours. Cliffjumper twitched uneasily at the sound, the twisted cadence mocking as the curve of the seekers lips widened, it made his very mass hot and itchy... itchy like back then.

"How _unfortunate_ that your ivory walls should crumble, god forgive us our trespass for you were not meant to walk with this or that, _you_ were not meant to be cast out little servants shadow."

"I said silence!" Mirage jumped, startled and just like that he was up and standing tall, every inch of him the governors son he was raised to be yet still he could not drown out the scraping and tapping of the seekers claws nor his piercing gaze or the slide of too sharp dentals over full black lips. The decepticon laughed at him, a cutting purr as sharp as it was shrill, a knife at his back in the dark, it made his internals crawl and his plating felt as if it were peeling away; leaving him naked with naught but the beads of condensation sweat dripping to the floor. It was like being propositioned, blatantly and thoroughly, armor gone, stripped to an aching metaskeleton and cracked down to the protform as the whore peals with racous laughter before your naked mass and shell.

"Little lost boy, fend for yourself; how sad, no servants to touch and no tutors to twaddle; daddy's gone but since when did that matter he was never there just like mother! "

He threw himself to the bars of the cell, angry and spitting, mass enflamed as the seeker seemed to boil. "SHUT UP!"

"Your pay -per-view family is dead and dust, dark eyes and empty rusted frames hauling you down, begging you suffer as they do- the little decepticon orphan-"

"SUHT UP!"

It had taken 2 minutes for him to bait the little _noble_mech into coming close enough to choke him with the chains fettering his wrists and 45 seconds for the other to wrest the mech from him, calling out for help. The red lines of cutting metal nowhere near the guilotine's blade or the hangman's noose that they could have been- should have been.

Starscream would just have to settle for scars and screams.

How boring.

So now they had bound him to his vertical medical cot with cuffs and bars, the thick metal restraints biting into his wrists, ankles and torso, wings flat at the back. The new guard assigned to him was double the last and along its center sat a tantalizing prize. The idea made him laugh, a chorus of shrill giggles, they couldn't possibly be _that_ stupid, this was too easy!

1 steel repair plinth, 4 cuffs, 5 bars and 4 guards... how stupid.

"What you laughing at." It wasn't a question so much as a slowly worded statement, a challenging thrum of displeasure.

_This was going to be fun._

"Virgin" He threw the word like a finely tuned knife and from the look of hitched shoulders and the angry huff of air through his huge body, it had hit home; square in the groin too.

"Me Grimlock not-"

"Grimlock, don't talk to him." Hound jabbed his elbow into the others side nervously as the seekers smile widened behind them and the room plunged back into silence.

Not a minute later, seemingly out of nowhere. "Virgin."

Grimlock's eyes widened for a second and then narrowed dangerously, a growl rumbling in his chest that made his huge frame shake with rising temper as the other guards shuffled nervously.

"Poor big mech, all that strength and armor and title; what could the little virgin possibly be doing wrong?" He could practically _feel_ the mech twitch, his shoulders hiked high, big hands clenching and unclenching. Starscream leaned into his restraints, bowing them as he arched into the sizzling caress of the bars of his cage. His whole frame a languid liquid slur as he purred low and deep the field crackling a twinge of hot pink with the heady vibrations.

The sensual cadence sent the dinobot's energy field into disarray, ebb and flow a roller-coaster eddy of irritation and unwanted arousal as the hum of power rattled through the bars and walls and down his shoulders into the very center of his bulk, his core temperature spiking.

The seekers lascivious toothy grin grew as if to split his fine face in half, the smile of a fox in a den of mice.

It was as if the larger mech could feel the others hot breath on the very nape of his neck, fingers at his hips, a predator stalking in the shadows behind it's prey, puffs of foul fog scorching up his spinal struts with drops of cold condensation snaking down his wires and cables, a fever heat sweat and shudder. His intakes caught in his chest, gritting his teeth as the purr became a thick hum framed with too-bright eyes, crimson blood spots behind a veil of cell bars and purple black. He turned only slightly, a child opening the closet door into the dark, watching from the corner of one cerulean eye as the seeker licked his lips and ran his slick silver tongue over too pointed teeth that seemed almost serrated. It was the seekers energy field he realized, the sheer heady power of the other mech throbbing through the very bars of the cell an awesome clawing force plucking his wiring here and there like actual physical hands on him, caressing his own considerable mass into a roiling red. His spark throbbed heavy, his fingers itched and body set to twitching.

A tremor wavered its way up the large mechs frame, mercilessly squelched by an inexperienced body unwilling to venture into shame but crawling beneath his plating like live-wires nonetheless, hissing and biting at his insides. A spasm of eons of unrequited lust curled up along his legs, his stoicism abruptly shattered by a violent shuddering in his knees that sent pins and needles all the way up to his abdomen, a bolt of electricity straight up his back on the cusp of tumult and he _shivered_.

The hum up his struts morphed into a cacophany of hiccuping cackles and peals of wet luxurious laughter echoing through the brig and stinging the senses. Grimlock's energy field spiked and crackled against the invasive other as without warning the T-rex swung around with an enraged roar, pinning the laughing seeker through the bars against the berth and towering over the moonlight white form beneath him. The three behind him jolted with shock and lunged forward to try and pry the giant mech off of him, cursing and shouting as not even their collective bulk was able to shift him as they scrabbled. He leaned in close, high above the bound and laughing seeker, clawed hands digging into the cell wall behind them, haunching over until face to face. He roared in the others faceplates, all teeth and spit and aching fangs.

It had taken only 3 minutes and 34 seconds for him to bait the large and startlingly young mech into coming close enough to bite out the giants throat and maneuver the other into shooting his left leg free enough to kick him across 3 halls and through 2 bolted doors before they could call for help and subdue him... annoying.

The blood-spray of hot energon and the look on the fools face as he grasped his gushing, spurting wound with his hands had been rather exquisite though.

The bite torn too deep, the wires and cables yanked out, mass torn, the T-rex wrenched back by the others to fall on the heap clutching a gapping whole that bled out alarmingly fast, his HUD a smear of warnings and his own energon, not daring to let go of his neck for fear it may very well snap in half. His gargled roar petering into a keening choked wail of terror as alarms sounded on both his HUD and through the cell, grasping and gasping, drowning on dry land as the others writhed to escape his bleeding bulk.

Staring into the mad seekers eyes with a front-row seat to his own internals hanging and oozing, dripping from smiling scissor clamp jaws, a grinning bear trap in the leaves, still laughing, still purring long loud and deep as the seeker sucked them dry of energon and the red massblood that held them together.

That...and the look on their faces when the _little_ mechs came running across their _little_ scene had been _hilarious_.

This time it seemed they were going to make things at least a little more fun for him; they'd cuffed and barred him to the cot with a side of stasis cuffs, chains and a bit to keep him quiet and preventing him from moving his head; strapped to the berth as he was...cute.

1 steel repair plinth, 4 stasis cuff fetters, 3 rows of chains, 5 bars, 5 guards and 1 mask and bit... silly.

He was almost amused as he dipped into a quick recharge, drugs still running their course through his veins, vision bobbing in and out with a white lace of static. He shifted his gaze drunkenly along the turned over table set, crushed by a certain irate tyrannosaur's massive weight; roving his eyes along the rows of clock-work toys and licking at the blood on his charcoal black lips with a giggle.

There was Huffer the sad little wanton to the left of his cell and the sweetly little firebug Hotshot at his side. He surveyed them lazily, watching them twitch, sparks on warm coals as he sucked on his cut lip and jiggled the bit in his mouth between sharp dentals. This would almost be as fun as dissecting Mudflap or Inferno but any commander would have to be an errant fool to put such fervent children in his care.

Lightfoot at the right, shuffling on his peds, water ever cradled by so much fire, the chill sulfur pools twisting at the volcanoes base waiting to boil. Further to the right at the nervous mechs arm stood Pointblank; a weary old peacemaker of few virtues and even fewer words. He supposed an audience of mute lunatics would do just fine, _his_ prize was in the doorway, all calm collected duty leashed at the neck with fine silken red ribbon and little brass bells.

A gift from the Prime himself.

At the lead of the group was none other than the autobot SIC himself, an _honor_ truly but stupid really... this was going to be a laugh and a half.

Logic, simple logic, logic like Shockwave, unto a child of something that by all means did not run on logic. He could see it in the others blue eyed crystal gaze, calculating without understanding; he wouldn't even _need_ to speak to break this mech.

The seeker let out a long drawling sigh through his vents, lazily setting his optics at their backs, studying every detail for where best to sheath a knife and claw, mapping out each of their internals and biographies and updating his files.

Lightfoot still carried his left ped as if it were damaged; the incident at the battle of pteras was 3 years 7 months 2 weeks 4 days and 4 hours and 34 minutes to the current date... and 15- 16 seconds. His ped had been amputated rather prettily by a hidden mine; really though if it took this long to get over a little blown limb what the frag was he doing in a war? If only he'd gotten the silly mech into an interrogation chamber, he'd show the boy a _blast _hehehehehe.

Needle-stick gaze pin-pricking up the logic child's spinal struts and crawling beneath his plating, seeping into every crevice, licking shocks of unreality, worms nipping into the flesh. Sensations that aren't there, pointless unease and a nervousness you can't explain, scenario after scenario running through your processors faster and faster. The devil at your back but the devil isn't real, this isn't right-

Prowl turned cautiously to lock stern optics with the seeker if only for a second, unreal red onto ocean blue into the purple black bruise of a rotting limb; was this mech some kind of techno-path?

_-Mother isn't here to tell you what's wrong, no one to make the wrong go away; it burns doesn't it? A bile in your chest like the fire in your eyes; cry it away-_

A crooked smile behind a mask and bit, a madman's chortle smothered behind soft ebony lips still oozing blood, a murder weapon as sharp as his tongue, wrapped in silk.

Eyes boring into the back of his head, he could feel it but that was silly because eyes don't touch, they don't caress so softly, not like a mad lovers hands along his frame to make him shiver ever so.

_-It feels like your brains are being pulled out through your nose, you can't focus, a tingling in your limbs and a snaking buzz up your spinal struts kissing along each sensor; a touch, a sigh, a lovers breath.-_

How much _fun _these fellows were proving to be, Starscream could spend whole hours staring them into submission; he must have gone through at least 4 more guards by now!

They even whispered of blindfolds; the idea made him giddy with a laughter that bubbled up like froth on his lips, guttered by the bit in his mouth and glittering in not-all-there hellfire eyes.

A look, a touch, a _purr_; all in the eyes as they met across the room again, enticing, wanting and waiting.

_-I can show you-_

Hours of staring, never moving, crawling up his back and neck and under his derma, an intruder into his very brain laced hot with heady static. He ran a systems check, everything coming back normal, no glitches, no intrusions. He briefly glared into the other's bloodied face, onyx black caked in dried energon along thin lips and across the eyes like a spattering brush stroke, mocking.

Those red eyes needled and burrowed into his plating as he turned away again, an opulent gaze that demanded his tryst, eyes that seemed to be getting larger or was he getting closer, he couldn't tell.

_-but that isn't logical... is it?-_

Come closer come closer they seemed as if to whisper, he could almost hear it in the halls a poisonous kiss echoing along his audials but that wasn't logical, eyes don't touch and they definitely don't speak... but then who's talking. He shifted, scanning the room and halls for intruders; no one there as he stood with his fellows, just they themselves and the dank walls closing in on them. He blinked, feeling as though being pulled inexorably backward, as if by looking away he gave the opportunity for the chained other to come that much closer, an itch between his shoulder blades as he suddenly felt a palm on his side.

_-"You good Prowler?"- _Jazz, he could always count on Jazz to pull him back into rhythm; thank god for Jazz. Recovering from his start of surprise with a deep intake, unaware he'd been holding his breath to begin with Prowl turned to assuage his friends worry, feeling an old cold sweat break in the motion and aching joints loosen.

Only Jazz wasn't there... he wasn't even on the days duty roster, how had he forgotten that?

_-nought but the laughing in the dark, the cheshire cat, the fleeting riddle of the wrong.-_

The hallucination, for that's what it had to be, was worrisome at best; perhaps it was the trick of a mind trying very hard not to be overwhelmed with suffocating silence between the lilting claws of hands around his neck that weren't really there.

However, the most catching terror was in the realization that with every glance he'd spared that freak behind him he had unconsciously moved one step _closer_ to it; _all_ of them had and now he was face to face with it. The seeker grinned maniacally around the bit in his mouth, twisting mask and face into a truly horrifying visage, still strapped flush against the repair plinth, still staring as if he knew just who and what had made him turn to the madmech so happily.

_-how cute...-_

In that moment he feared for Jazz, his lines running cold as he could swear he could hear the murder in the seekers bloody eyes. Staring and staring, portholes to hell itself tacked onto the body of a mech; eyes that were a world and a being unto their own, grasping, clawing, pulling his brain out through his nasal plating and into the unforgiving red. Eyes like death, eyes like the devil, Unicron himself looking through the vermilion windows and _pulling_.

He couldn't look away, they wouldn't let him... and for some reason... _it made sense._

And that was when the world glitched and crashed.

It took 168 minutes and 22 seconds for his dear mech to crack and break the 6 foot distance rule, into the spiders web, pretty little brass bells broken and red silken ribbons undone.

168 minutes and 22 seconds to lure a playmate with its own for the lock-pick talons of his hands and feet and to dig them merrily into the mechs spark chamber.

Now it was night, it was calm and it was quiet and they were kind enough to give him the whole brig to himself... how sweet. There was nothing to be heard and nothing to be seen but oh so much to be done.

He sighed behind his custom made mask and bit, wriggling his tongue against the roof of his mouth idly, searching for a little splinter. There, at the top of his palate the pin came loose and with a delicate flick of his serpentine glossa he had it between his teeth and jammed into the lock at his collar.

1 steel repair plinth, 4 stasis cuff fetters, 3 rows of chains, 5 bars, 5 straps, 1 bit, 1 mask, 10 guards in the hall and a shock collar... well, if he kept Megatron waiting any longer the bastard would just get angrier...how droll.

By morning all that was left to signify his having been there at all were the now empty restraints that had housed him and an eerily looping security tape. No one had seen him leave the brig, no one had heard a sound, the containment field stood intact, mocking them.

No one slept that night, their only company the creaking in the metal walls of dark corridors and the groaning hiss of rusted hinges, their own home a yawning blackness in the quiet.

The laughing in the dark.


End file.
